Fandoms Love Sex Too Much and It's Gross
I'm going to start this article by saying I'd fuck the shit out a woman if one would let me, so I'm allowed to say these things, and I feel like the people I'm ruthlessly bullying aren't even gay so it's ok. I also proudly have a half finished Harry Potter fanfiction hidden deep within my computer, and so I am 100% qualified to preach on this subject. I'm not sure how this became 3 whole pages, I'm sorry.
Have you ever discovered the fun world of fanfiction? Good God almighty it's a treat. It's where teenagers go and write their favorite movie characters boneing even though they had one scene together. And damn is it depraved. From what I can tell, about 90% of fanfictions are 'romance' and by that I mean porn. Literally just porn. Now some fanfiction is not - and somehow, some of it's pretty good (romance or otherwise). But I'm really going to stick to that 90% figure. Even if some of them have real plots, most cannot avoid a tantalizing romance. Now I have no problem with romance, but fanfiction romance is the worst thing ever and I'll explain how:
Firstly, its rarely like a normal, healthy relationship. Now most of these authors are probably in their teens, so I don't expect them to have experience in adult partnerships, but the shit they come up with astonishing. Incest is super popular, see wincest or any game that features twin siblings. It's not like the source material covers this type of relationship, they pull sexual love out of thin air. This brings me to my main point: these writers want to make a relationship unique, and presumably more interesting to readers, by ignoring any sense of dignity and inserting their own weird fetishes into the work. They also do not comprehend what a platonic relationship is. Everyone has to be fucking. What concerns me in particular is that the fandoms that skew towards younger audiences tend to feature the most disgusting content. I can't even look at FNAF without wanting to end myself. Vore, bestiality, insane violence, torture porn, shit involving underage characters, rape aplenty, it's a lot more common that you'd probably think. Especially rape - they even have a 'less offensive' word for it: noncon, meaning nonconsensual, like that's supposed to disguise the fact that its literally rape. What pisses me off worse, is that it's almost always done so poorly.
Imagine: our big breasted but shy protagonist female has caught the attention of our main antagonist because she's so fucking perfect except sometimes she's a little clumsy. So he corners her in an alleyway or something and starts getting her naked. And she knows its bad, and tells him to stop, but oh my he's just so handsome and she secretly loves it and gives in to his advances after like two minutes. And they end up falling in love anyway! Like she 'forgives' him if the author even bothers to pretend that something illegal happened. This doesn't always require rape, this happens a lot with general douchbaggery to kidnapping type shit. But she always ends up with the guy anyway. There's a serial killer/creepypasta (basically fake serial killers) group that just fantasizes about being kidnapped by a literal killer who doesn't kill them for some reason and they fall in love. The woman doesn't even change the guy, so it's not about that. It's taking loving a bad boy to the extreme. I like men who ride motorcycles and stick it to the government as much as the next girl, but damn wanting to fuck a serial killer is the grossest shit I can think of.
Most stories aren't this extreme, but there is a very large presence of abusive relationships being normalized to various extents. It's very popular to have the sexy female lead get with the bad guy and that brings with it a lot of potential to make the relationship unrealistic as shit. The vast, vast majority of people would not forgive and marry someone who's kidnapped them or is an evil criminal. The writers can't handle the nuance that would be required to make such a thing seem real. Instead it's just, "oh I know he just murdered eight babies in front of me and made me eat human flesh (yes there's a story I read with this plot, why god??) but he's so hot I can't control myself. There's also more realistic variations such as normalizing student/teacher relationships or other power differences along with a lot of emotional abuse being seen as not such.
A quick side note - where are teens learning this shit? Where do these fantasies come from? Man I had to learn what vore was (you like, eat someone?? And that's hot??? Like yeah they're inside you, but inside your stomach??? Dude I do not know) from these damn youths! Who told them that this was a thing?
So, there is a lot of LGBT+ works in various fandoms. This is not a bad thing. I don't even mind making characters that are ambiguous or straight into a gay character. It's just the way it's done. I know some of these kids are just trying to express themselves and want representation in the media, but I don't think most gay conversions happen with good intentions.
It just feels like it's not about a relationship. It's just gay fetishization. Fanfiction authors are skewed heavily toward females, whereas gay relationships in these pieces are very skewed toward male/male. I'm not saying women can't write gay men, but when its written to sexualize I think it's inappropriate. Any lesbian can tell you that lesbian porn sucks when you can tell it's been created for a male audience. Why are they giving blowjobs to dildos, they can't even feel pleasure? But that's a rant I can save for another day, my point is that it seems really wrong to make sexualized content like this. Gay men aren't taking it up the butt because for some reason teenage girls find that really hot. They're not doing it for you, honey. Let them be gay and don't think about what happens in the bedroom.
Now how can you tell that's fetishization? Well go read one and you'll see. Let's take a disturbingly common trope I've found in the Harry Potter fandom. Harry's gay now, which is fine, but now he acts super gay. His whole personality and body has been changed so that he's the most feminine twink to ever exist. He's shy and submissive, he has long hair and looks physically very girly. And now he's gonna get rammed in the ass by Draco Malfoy (or worse, lord help us they're so many Harry/Snape stories I'm going to die) and he's gonna like it because he's a total whore now too. And that's the story! Similarly, people will use an awful trope like alpha/beta fake bullcrap where the alpha is masculine and can't control their urges toward the feminized beta man and they fuck like literal animals. There are A LOT of sub/dom gay relationships and they're all bad with scary power dynamics and abuse from the dom.
You can write gay characters. You should write gay characters. You should not make every gay character either a complete faggot twink who acts exactly like a woman (and in some stories can even get pregnant, fuck just kill me) or a hyper-masculine douche who is abusive under the guise of being controlling, but in like a hot way so it's ok. Don't completely change an existing character's personality just because they like dick now. Harry Potter can be the same person and like dick. Not all gay men are submissive twinks Jesus Christ. You can write porn involving gay characters, but I'm not going to read it. Instead, you really, really should write believable romances between gay characters. You should make your gay characters people and not just sex objects. Why do young women find gay men having sex attractive? Like it has nothing to do with you? And butts are pretty gross to be honest. I don't get it.
Alas, I'm not done. You see, fandoms go apeshit over real human beings the same way they do with fictional characters. And yes, this involves wanting straight men, often with girlfriends, to get with other men that they are literally just friends with. There's a lot of videos about this on YouTube, as some of these men talk about how fucking creepy and annoying it is. Like, it can be kind of funny until people start sending you art they've made of you naked with your best friend, harassing the women you're seeing, harassing you in public, refusing to accept your sexuality, making compilation videos that are hours long of everything you've ever said to your friend and how this proves you're secretly seeing each other, and just being so fucking weird in general. Like these are human beings??? These men have families??? Never draw even remotely suggestive art of someone without their permission my god. Honestly, even though not all their fans are this extreme, I think it's too far to even have strong opinions about who a person should be with. It only seems like you know them, but you don't. You do not know these people. Your opinion does not matter. I would never do more than a passing 'aww they seem pretty cute together, good for them' with an existing couple, and Jesus never imagine one that isn't happening. These influencers and celebrities still have body autonomy. They are still human beings and can date whatever gender and whomever they damn please. Like holy fuck just mind your own business.
If you're bored, go google your favorite movie or show and look at all the bad fanart and read cringy fanfics. There are also other channels devoted to making fun of these people, Potterotica is a fantastic podcast where they read bad Harry Potter ones. It's great. Some stories are quite infamous in their communities for how goddamned awful they are. Surely, hours of entertainment to be had.